Not far from here is this place - the Fonthill Museum, former home of Henry Chapman Mercer. The entire place is constructed of concrete. Don't let that fool you - it's not the cold gray variety. It's much more - a very organic interior floor plan that would take weeks to learn to navigate with the meandering arrangement of rooms and random stairways throughout. Every surface is embellished with embedded tiles - from his Moravian Pottery and Tile Works factory as well as tiles collected from places around the world. You have to see it....astonishing!
And anyone claiming to be a HIM fan should know this is the site of a video shoot, and must be visited.
Let's take a minute and watch it HERE....and then click over and see "the making of" HERE, ff to 5 minutes.
So we behaved and didn't get our photo-op shot....earlier we traveled into the woods to see this:
When the lighting is better tomorrow I'll show you the tiles I got - the factory still makes stuff! They didn't let us use our cameras inside....so you'll have to watch the HIM video afterall! Mr. Mercer was many things - an archeologist, architect, tile-maker, and collector - and his accumulation of books look stunning - piled high in the two library rooms we were shown (the tour only takes you through a portion of the home). It's worth the visit....and if you're one of my HIM fan friends, *winks* because I know you're jealous.
EDIT: here's the tiles we got.....I don't know the significance of the "AVALON" image to Mercer, but we saw it embedded in a fireplace, and it's significant to us as Avalon is Fallon's middle name (for the Roxy Music song and album!)....and IF you look closer.......AVALON......do you see what I see???? *giggles*
